in collaboration with Jon Irigoyen

Hodja Nasreddin Contest on the Mobile Disco was a culmination of 1-year long project of joke contests held weekly for labor migrants and creative workers in St-Petersburg in 2014.

It is a collaboration with artist Jon Irigoyen, Anna Tereshkina and Alena Petite.  A mobile audio platform was placed on the top of a car that traveled around the city and broadcasted Middle Asian and Caucasian music. Mobile Disco headed from the art space Pushkinskaya 10 along Nevskiy prospect to Apraksin Dvor market where labor migrants have been selling goods since 1990s. The car was accompanied by to clowns (like Pierro and Arlekino in comedia del Arte) — a migrant woman beating up a policeman with a broom. The entire procession had huge success at the market: it gathered a lot of people around and many of them joined the performance and danced. The tradition of St-Petersburg raves and open airs was combined with traditional celebrations of Middle Asian and Caucasian countries in a Bakhtinian carnivalesque way.